


The Black Rider

by VulpesCobalt (orphan_account)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Apocalypse, End of the World, Harbinger Harry, M/M, Master of Death Harry Potter, Observer Harry, Sirius Black's Flying Motorbike, Zombie Apocalypse, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-07
Updated: 2015-12-07
Packaged: 2018-05-05 11:05:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5373008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/VulpesCobalt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rick keeps seeing the same mysterious person over and over, always during a point where all seems lost, and the sightings always precede an event leaving the group beaten down, as if he is there for no other purpose than to watch them go through hell and back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Black Rider

******The Black Rider  By VulpesCobalt**

* * *

The Black Rider is sort of an urban legend within the group, though more often than not they refer to him as Rick's Rider because he is the only one who has actually seen the Rider.

The Black Rider is a man, though Rick is not necessarily possitive on the gender of this person, dressed head to toe in black, riding around on a motorcycle that roars like a behemoth as he speeds by, but remains dead silent to everyone else in the group. He is a harbinger of doom that Rick sees shortly before horrible events take place. When Rick sees the Black Rider they all know something will be happening soon, and usually someone dies. Sometimes Rick sees him riding by on his loud motorcycle, while other times he is seen standing a distance away watching as the events unfold, and other times all he sees of the Rider is him disappearing around a corner. Despite Rick's numerous sightings of him, not one of their group really believes in his existence beyond a bizzare hallucination. They believe that being touched by death, or the coma, gave him a bizzare ability to sense bad things. Like instinct, but stronger and with a hallucinatory messenger. Odder things had happened even before the dead started to rise.

What most of them don't know, is that Rick saw him before the apocalypse too.

The first time Rick sees the Rider, the world hasn't ended. He drives past him while he and Shane are on their eay to respond to the call that ends with him getting shot. He remembers the incident with stunning clarity, because he got the chills as they passed him. Rick didn't even know why he felt the sudden breathtaking fear clench his heart as they drove by the man as he was sitting on the railing of the highway, his bike resting on the side out of the way. It wasn't like he automatically assumed all motorcyclists to be bad men in drug gangs like Shane did. He brushed it off at the time, but then he was shot and he woke up in the apocalypse.

The next time he sees the Black Rider, he is riding into Atlanta after the helicopter. All Rick sees of him is a second long glance as he passes him, right before he runs into a hoard of walkers. All he needs is a second for the rider to walk across his sight, from the entrance of one alley to the next. It isn't like he could go back to see if he really saw him because he is too busy trying to stay alive and uneaten, and by the time he thinks about the Rider again he's already on his way to the Quarry with the others.

He only mentions the Rider after the death of Amy and countless others in the camp. He sees him roar by as they go to get Merle and the guns and tools. He thinks it is a warning about the Vatos at first, but then they get back to the camp and he understands. He didn't see the Black Rider twice that day, but he heard the roar of his motorcycle on the way back.

After the Amy incident the sightings get more and more frequent. Rick sees him drive by on his oddly large pitch black 1959 Triumph, more like a shadow than a man, and he knows something bad will happen within the next twenty four hours. They nearly die in the CDC, they loose Sophia, Carl is shot, Shane dies, the barn falls. Countless other events happen, and always the Black Rider is there, unseen by anyone but Rick.

Winter is harsh. Many bad things happen on their quest for a permanate safe place.

The Rider seems to lurk after them like death upon his pale horse, always there but never anywhere close by. Rick, and in a way the others, begins to fear the Rider in the same ambiguous way a child fears the boogeyman. Daryl believes him, not surprising considering the man believes in chupacabras and pretty much any other cryptid you can name, but the others do not necessarily believe that the Rider is real. They believe Rick sees him, but like aliens, or ghosts, or bigfoot, they do not believe the Rider actually exists.

Lori is going to have the baby soon, a month or two until she should be nine months if it is Shane's, or about three if it is his. She looks like she is hiding a planet under her shirt, which is an odd look considering the rest of them are starting to look like scarecrows. Rick thinks it must look as though she is stealing all their fat for the baby in an odd sick way. She is weak, they aren't sure if the baby is going to make it, and everyday he fears ge will see the Black Rider again.

Still, he doesn't expect this.

**~*~**

He doesn't expect their camp to be overrun with Walkers. He doesn't expect them to be on the edge of death before the baby even has a chance to try and breathe it's first breath. He certainly doesn't expect them to survive by the hair of their teeth, most of them dead or dying, only for him to fall into a bear pit. He's laying at the bottom drooling blood and in so much pain, watching his team scramble about to find a way to rescue him. His intestines are torn and wrapped around one of the spikes, he's choking on the blood in his peirced lung, and his leg is broken to where the bone sticks out. This is not a pleasant way to die.

The world turns greyscale like an old T.V. The color seeps put of everything, and all around him becomes silent and still as if the world around him turned to stone. He is no longer in pain. He sees a pair of black boots on the ground and raises his head to look at the being beside him.

"You are useless." The Black Rider says, his first words ever spoken in the seven months or so since Rick first saw him, not including the very first time before the apocalypse. Not that he spoke then either, and not like he really ever stuck around long enough to speak. He has a nice voice, soft deep and British.

The Rider removes his helmet, revealing that he is in fact a man like Rick thought. Rick sort of expected that he wouldn't have a face below his helmet, just empty darkness or a skull or something equally scary, but the harbinger has the face of a human male, angular thin and pale, with wild black hair to his shoulders, a stubble on his face, and eyes so vividly green they practically glow. The only sign that he isn't human is that he is the only thing in color beside himself, and he has a pair of long wings upon his back, like angelic raven wings.

"Am I dead?" Rick asks.

The Black Rider shakes his head. "It's not your time yet Richard Andrew Grimes." Rick shivers when the Rider says his name, his full name. "I will turn the clock back twenty-four hours, go North instead of South and you will find the sanctuary you seek."

Rick nods and watches him pull an odd looking necklace out of one of his pockets, a delicate gold chain with an hourglass encased in two spinning circles. He goes to spin it and Rick panics. "Wait!" the Black Rider looks at him. "Why me? I don't understand. What is so special about me?"

The harbinger shrugs. "There isn't anything particularly special about you." he answers. "To be honest I wouldn't have looked twice your way, if it weren't for the fact that you saw me on the highway the day you got shot. I was invisible to everyone but you saw me. You always see me even when no one else can, and that is what makes you so important."

Rick doesn't know how to answer this, but he doesn't have to. The world spins like a child's top and then Rick is standing uninjured in the same place he had been before they headed South. "Thank you." he says.

The Black Rider grins. "No one has ever thanked me before." he says. "I have to go now. I've tarried too long at your side. You will never see me again. Stay safe, Richard."

With these words he leans forward and kisses Rick. Just a soft press of soft warm lips on Rick's own chapped lips. It doesn't even last a full second. Then he is gone and the world is in color, moving around like it should be. In Rick's hand there is a charm shaped like a triangle with a circle and line inside it, the only proof that he was there. Rick turns it over to see an inscription engraved on the back.  _Don't waste my gift. ~ H.J.P._

He slips the necklace into his shirt pocket and then goes to wake everyone up so they can get ready to leave. North the harbinger said. So North they will go.

Two days later they find the prison.

* * *


End file.
